670 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
As for the practice of plural livings, it was perhaps as much in vogue in England as in Germany. Dr. Sherbourne, Colet's predecessor as dean of St. Paul's, was a notable example of a pluralist, but in this respect was exceeded by Morton and Wolsey. As for the ignorance of the English clergy, it is sufficient to refer to the testimony of Bishop Hooper who, during his visitation in Gloucester, 1551, found 168 of 311 clergymen unable to repeat the Ten Commandments, 40 who could not tell where the Lord's Prayer was to be found and 31 unable to give the author. ^
In Scotland, the state of the clergy in pre-Reformation times was probably as low as in any other part of Western Europe. ^ John IV. 's bastard son was appointed bishop of St. Andrews at 16 and the illegitimate sons of James V., 1513-1542, held the five abbeys of Holyrood, Kelso, St. Andrews, Melrose and Coldingham. Bishops lived openly in concubinage and married their daughters into the ranks of the nobility. In the marriage document, certifying the nuptials of Cardinal Beaton's eldest daughter to the Earl of Crawford, 1546, the cardinal called her his child. On the night of his murder, he is said to have been with his favorite mistress, Marion Ogilvie.
Side by side with the decline of the monastic institutions, there prevailed among the monks of the 15th century a most exaggerated notion of the sanctifying influence of the monastic vow. According to Luther, the monks of his day recognized two grades of Christians, the perfect and the imperfect. To the former the monastics belonged. Tlieir vow was regarded as a second baptism which cleared those who received it from all stain, restored them to the divine image and put them in a class with the angels. Luther was encoiu-aged by his superiors to feel, after he had taken the vow, that he was as pure as a child. This second regeneration had been taught by St. Bernard and Tliomas Aquinas. Thomas said that it may with reason be
may have at least 20 pence a day to sleep an hour with a friar, a monk or a priest. Who is she that would labor for a groat a day and may have at least 12 pence a day to be a bawd to a priest, monk or friar ?"
1 See James Gairdner in Engl. Hist. Rev., Jan., 1905.
2 Dr. Tulloch says in his Luther and uther Leaders of the licformation, " Nowhere else had the clergy reached such a pitch of flagrant and disgraceful
§ 74. PREACHING. 671
affirmed that any one " entering religion," that is, taking the monastic vow, thereby received remission of sins.^
§ 74. PreacJiing.
The two leading preachers of Europe during the last 50 years of the Middle Ages were Jerome Savonarola of Florence and John Geiler of Strassburg. Early in the 15th century, Gerson was led by the ignorance of the clergy to recommend a reduction of preaching,^ but in the period just before the Reformation there was a noticeable revival of the praclTce oTpFea^Hing _in_Germany^nd a movement in that direction was felt in England. Erasmus, as a cosmopolitan scholar, made an appeal for the function of the pulpit, which went to all portions of Western Europe.
InjGrermany, the importance of the sermon was emphasized by synodal decree.s_and honjiletia manugjs. Such synods were the synods of Eichstadt, 1463, Bamberg, 1491, Basel, 1503,Meissen, 1504. Surgant's noted Handbook on the Art of Preaching praised the sermon as the instrument best adapted to lead the people to repentance and inflame Christian love and called it " the way of life, the ladder of virtue and the gate of paradise." ^ It was pronounced as much a sin to let a word from the pulpit fall unheeded as to spill a drop of the sacramental wine. In the penitential books and the devotional manuals of the time, stress was laid upon the duty of attending preachiug,
iniquity and the Eoman Catholic religion such an utter corruption of all that is good as in Scotland." #
1 Bernard in Migne, 182 : 889, Th. Aq. Summa, II. 2, q. 189. Deuifle, Luther unci Lutherthtim, I. 208, makes the monstrous charge of deliberate lying and knavery against Luther for his treatment of monkish baptism. Kolde : Deniflp's Beschimpfung 31. Lzithers, Leipz., 1904, pp. .33-49, shows the justice of Luther's representations. Their truth is not affected by the statement of Joseph Ries : Das geistUche Leben nach der Lehre d. hi. Bernard, p. 36, namely that Bernard and the Church held that outside the convents there may be some who are in the state of perfection while inside cloistral walls there may be those who are in the imperfect state.
2 Contra vanam cnriositatem, Du Pin's ed., 1728, I. 106 sqq.
8 Manuale curatorum predicandi proebens modum, 1503, quoted by Janssen, I. 38.